Many movements here, but I like the mothers who ran Save our Sons.
To my discredit, I thought they were a bunch of stupid commo or deluded bitches until the last year or two of our involvement in Vietnam, by which time I’d swung around to be against the war.
Draft Resisters
Broadcast 6.30pm on 26/07/2004
Irene Miller was an unlikely campaigner, a mother of ten and also a grandmother, she was one of the many women who formed ‘Save our Sons’ during the Vietnam War. Irene formed a network of suburban safe houses that helped draft resisters evade police. Michael Hamel-Green was a draft resister who used the network, and became well known for popping up at anti-war rallies.
GEORGE NEGUS: Finally, another bunch of Australians who spent some time in the old clink, but for a quite different reason. Back in the '60s and '70s during the Vietnam War anticonscription protesters in this country broke the law constantly and consciously. Their claim then was that this was the only way to get their message across.
IRENE MILLER, ‘SAVE OUR SONS’: In the '60s, I was just an average housewife. I had 10 children. For seven years I was an anticonscription campaigner with Save Our Sons.
MICHAEL HAMEL-GREEN, DRAFT RESISTER: We were saying that we were not prepared to be a part of any system that was causing that amount of suffering and death and destruction for no good reason in Vietnam.
IRENE MILLER: During the Second World War I was an ambulance driver in Britain and I just thought that the Vietnam War, we didn’t want to get involved in anything like that. I didn’t want to see other cities destroyed like, you know, London.
REPORTER ON ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE: This barrel held the immediate future for 40,300 young Australians who have registered for national service.
IRENE MILLER: It was putting your marbles in a barrel. It was like sort of making a game of it.
MICHAEL HAMEL-GREEN: When the Menzies Government sought to introduce conscription in 1964 they realised that it was going to be controversial to send Australian troops to Vietnam.
IRENE MILLER: When I saw a little note about Save Our Sons, I really sort of thought I wanted to do something. We did become known as the ‘hats and gloves ladies’. We would be handing out leaflets to all the young men that turned up, sort of saying, “You don’t have to go through these gates. You don’t have to do this. There are alternatives.” Sometimes we’d get jeered at and we’d be told to, sort of, “Go home and get your husband’s dinner.”
MICHAEL HAMEL-GREEN: I was conscripted in the very first ballot. Um, that was 1965. As a university student, you were entitled to a deferment till the end of your studies. I read a lot and came to the conclusion it was a totally unjustified and abhorrent war. I took the step in early ‘68 of burning my notice to attend a medical. This was one of about three occasions that I was in Pentridge. Initially we were extremely anxious about what might happen inside and how other prisoners inside might regard us, but actually we found an incredible amount of support. We formed the Draft Resisters’ Union. We then developed a whole campaign urging young people not to register.
YOUNG MAN ON ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE: I’ve been thinking of not registering. What are my chances of getting into trouble, getting called up?
MICHAEL HAMEL-GREEN: I think possibly there were a number of servicemen who thought that we were traitors or something like that. Save Our Sons played a key role in developing a network of safe houses that we could go to. And there was one occasion when I was staying in a rented house and the estate agent rang up to say the Commonwealth Police thought there were draft resisters in the house. So he tipped us off. Everywhere in the community there was a tremendous amount of support.
The Vietnam moratorium was in May 1970 and I appeared in the middle of a demonstration of 100,000 people in the moratorium, and the Government was afraid to arrest us.
IRENE MILLER: There was something different about the city on that day. People were coming from all parts of the city. We’d been told, you know, there were going to be riots in the streets, but it seemed that everybody was bent on keeping this a peaceful protest, a peaceful moratorium, to end the war. Normally, we handed out our leaflets outside the building but this time we decided we would go inside and, um, were given 14 days for trespass and sent to Fairlea Prison. When we first went through the gates, I mean, it was scary. I was 50 years old at the time and I had 10 children and several grandchildren.
MICHAEL HAMEL-GREEN: The maritime unions came out in support of the Fairlea Five and actually brought the port of Melbourne to a standstill.
IRENE MILLER: It was wonderful, you know, to come out and and the family was all there to greet us. It was wonderful.
MICHAEL HAMEL-GREEN: I think it was a major moment in the whole campaign against conscription when that happened. '71, they withdrew troops but they retained conscription. When Whitlam came in, he immediately suspended conscription. He released the draft resisters the next day. And we were absolutely ecstatic about that.
IRENE MILLER: It was just euphoric…to think that we’d got, sort of, somebody in who was going to really stop it all.
MICHAEL HAMEL-GREEN: The incredible mushrooming of groups throughout the community, suburbs and professions and workplaces, it was just wonderful to see. In some ways, some of that has never been repeated.
IRENE MILLER: It was a successful campaign in its time. But it needs reviving again, I feel.
GEORGE NEGUS: How about those ‘hats and gloves ladies’? “Go home and get your husband’s dinner.” That’s a deep and philosophical response if ever I’ve heard one.
